#tribes

Rep your tribe❤️❤️❤️

I don’t think many people, even some native people, are aware that the legal names of many tribes are actually not from the tribe.

Often the names came about because colonizers would ask one tribe "hey, what do you call those people over there?". then they would assign the name given to that tribe. so often the names were descriptions from unrelated tribes, or in more extreme cases, insults.

The Muscogee tribe got pretty lucky since the legal name was "creek" and it came from a different tribe going "oh, those are the people near the creek". which, is accurate enough, most creek settlements were placed along creeks. a famous one that is related to the Muscogee is the name "Cherokee". "Cherokee" is a Muscogee word meaning something along the lines of "people who don’t speak our language". Even this is pretty light compared to some names. some official tribal names translate to phrases like "dog eaters" or "lazy people".

What people often call the "skeleton tribe" isn't a separate tribe at all, but a visual tradition practiced by groups in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, especially the Chimbu people (also known as Simbu).

These communities live in mountainous regions of the country's interior and have a long history of body painting as part of ritual, performance, and identity. Among the most recognizable forms is their skeleton body paint, where men cover themselves in black and white clay to resemble human bones.

The skeletal imagery was used as a form of psychological warfare, designed to intimidate enemies by making warriors appear less human and more like spirits or supernatural beings.

In Germania (chapter 40), written in 98 AD by the Roman historian Tacitus, described the Earth goddess Nerthus:

“they are distinguished by a common worship of Nerthus, that is, Mother Earth, and believes that she intervenes in human affairs and rides through their peoples. There is a sacred grove on an island in the Ocean, in which there is a consecrated chariot, draped with cloth, where the priest alone may touch. He perceives the presence of the goddess in the innermost shrine and with great reverence escorts her in her chariot, which is drawn by female cattle. There are days of rejoicing then and the countryside celebrates the festival, wherever she designs to visit and to accept hospitality. No one goes to war, no one takes up arms, all objects of iron are locked away, then and only then do they experience peace and quiet, only then do they prize them, until the goddess has had her fill of human society and the priest brings her back to her temple. Afterwards the chariot, the cloth, and, if one may believe it, the deity herself are washed in a hidden lake.”

The book Barbarian Rites: The Spiritual World of the Vikings and the Germanic Tribes by Hans-Peter Hasenfratz (page 109) goes on to further explain:

George Catlin, B* H*, Prominent S* Chief, oil on canvas, 1832. National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC.

In the dispute within his tribe over the question of forced relocation to the West, the warrior B* H* (c. 1770-1838) headed the S*’s anti-American faction. His attempt to drive white settlers out of S* territory were foiled by the United States army in 1832. B* H* and his close associates, among them the W* prophet W* C*, were arrested and imprisoned in St. Louis and Fort Monroe in Virginia for several weeks. Afterward they were shown the great cities of the whites, where B* H* attracted much attention. His autobiography, which he dictated, is the first such work by a N. A. author. Although he finally accepted the land cessions to the Americans, he remained to the end unreconciled to K* (c. 1783-1848), the S*’s pro-American chief.